U.S. hospitals are increasingly discarding less-than-perfect organs, denying the sickest patients on organ waitlists lifesavings transplants out of fear poor outcomes will yield worse federal performance ratings.
Adel Bozorgzadeh, MD, a transplant surgeon at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, coauthored a study that found a sharp rise in the number of people dropped from organ transplant waitlists since the federal government began imposing transplant standards in 2007.
The standards are tied to federal hospital ratings and Medicare funding, and hospitals' ability to meet these standards also influences their reputation in the broader medical community. Because surgeries involving extremely ill patients are riskier, hospitals have been avoiding them .
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